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Additional sewer work approved for Geneva

GENEVA – Aldermen approved additional work by a company currently lining some of the city’s sanitary sewers because of heavy storm infiltration, officials said.

Geneva awarded a contract in May to Insituform Technologies of Oak Park for $113,785 to place cured-in-place-pipe to repair sanitary sewers without digging.

But televising the inside of the sanitary sewers showed 2,436 feet of eight-inch sanitary sewer with heavy infiltration, officials said.

Aldermen acting as the Committee of the Whole on Monday unanimously approved extending the company’s work at an additional cost of $76,622.20, for a total contract of $190,407.20.

The City Council will take final action.

Officials said the amount still is within the city’s budgeted amount.

Superintendent of Water and Wastewater Bob Van Gyseghem said the technology relines the sanitary sewers with an epoxy that forms against the pipe walls and stops stormwater infiltration. He estimated the epoxy would last about 50 years.

Van Gyseghem said the other lines the company were relining were along Anderson Boulevard and in the Glengarry subdivision. The additional sewer line work is in the Fargo Boulevard and Dunstan Road areas.

“Those lines are in urgent need of lining,” Van Gyseghem said. “A lot of the older areas – the north section of town from probably Anderson to State Street was a concern for me – a lot of excess flow comes into those areas. That’s probably our next concentration. That’s one mile of the 120 miles we have. This is only a small piece of what needs to be done over the next decade.”

First Ward Alderman Mike Bruno asked whether there was any way to know how much impact the work would have.

“Not really, because it varies by the different storms, how much saturation is already in the ground,” Van Gyseghem said.

Van Gyseghem said a couple of years ago the city had flooding problems in the Geneva East area during a six-inch rainfall, particularly along Manchester Course.

“There’s not much we can do with a six-inch rainfall, it still happens that we will get flooding,” Van Gyseghem. “Today’s storm, because of improvements we made there a couple years ago, there were absolutely no concerns.”

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